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Lyft Offers Monthly Passes for Frequent Riders

If you're one of the growing number of people who rely on ridesharing apps for commuting, errands, and other everyday trips (and also non-everyday trips like rides to the emergency room), you'll want to size up Lyft's new monthly pass offering.

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Available in Los Angeles, Miami, San Diego, Chicago, Atlanta, and Washington, D.C., the $29 passes offer 20 free Lyft Line rides of up to $20 each valid for the entire month of November. Or, if you'd rather save a bit of money up front, there's also a $20 option that comes with 20 rides for $2 each. (Too bad Lyft doesn't operate in China—all those twos would make it very lucky).

Obviously, the passes make the most sense if you don't mind the possibility of sharing your ride with other Lyft Line users, and you plan to take several rides of just under $20 each. If your trip costs more than $20, Lyft will charge your credit or debit card for the excess.

Uber in August offered a similar but slightly more expensive monthly ride pass for its Pool ridesharing service. The $30 pass offered up to 20 rides for $1 each.

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Lyft's offering comes as the company both seeks to compete with the much-larger Uber, and assure investors that it is on the road to profitability. At a conference hosted by the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Lyft co-founder John Zimmer said the service has more than doubled its ridership in the US since late last year, with a projected 17 million rides in October.

Lyft still has $1.3 billion of the $2 billion in venture capital it has raised so far, and sees a "path to profitability," according to the Journal. But if Uber's experience is anything to go by, that path will not be an easy one. Uber lost more than $1 billion in the first half of 2016 alone, much of which it spent on subsidies to lure in new riders and drivers.